Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[faatal]

4 hours ago, spacepiggio said:

Thanks for the Stable & will future patches be backward compatible for saved games & will U let us know when to use the Corana Wipes. I wasn't expecting this until Jan., awesome work during the Holidays, Merry Xmas...Pimps & fellow Fan Boys...I can finally get passed Day 7...Chaos to all & to all a good Z Bath...

Once an alpha is stable, we won't break saves for that alpha unless it is some major issue we can't work around.

 

Our goal was to get it out before Christmas and it was close. January should see a 20.1 addressing bugs and other issues.

2 minutes ago, Jay_ombie said:

After watching some play and knowing about short cuts getting to the POI LOOT, would it be way better to only spawn in the loot at the required destination after the last zombie was killed in the POI ?

In the future, keys or some such mechanism will address that.

[Kosmic Kerman]

11 minutes ago, Jay_ombie said:

After watching some play and knowing about short cuts getting to the POI LOOT, would it be way better to only spawn in the loot at the required destination after the last zombie was killed in the POI ?

Ultimately this is player choice. While I am sure there are some things TFP can do, the basic premise of the game is that every block is  destroyable.  There will always be shortcuts to loot.  And to be honest, it's not like the loot in the caches is all that great anyway. Cars are one of the better sources of tools. Weapons are more easily obtained from Trader Rewards and Trader Inventory. Schematics are best found looking in mailboxes, book shelves, and random trash. And the best drop for Ammo is zombie loot bags.  Just going to the Snow or Wasteland biomes and looting every car is probably a more efficient use of time than destroying blocks to get into loot caches.

[Blake_]

17 minutes ago, faatal said:

Once an alpha is stable, we won't break saves for that alpha unless it is some major issue we can't work around.

 

Our goal was to get it out before Christmas and it was close. January should see a 20.1 addressing bugs and other issues.

In the future, keys or some such mechanism will address that.

BTW, I noticed that vehicles can hit an invisible wall (usually at top speed,  but happened with bicycle in a 10k map a few times too) and result in stuff like jumping several meters into the air, bouncing off the invisible wall, backflipping, etc. The physics of the invisible wall issue can vary between vehicles and where you hit it at the time.

[Teckno]

 

Has anybody an Idea what this is ? There are these "ghost blocks" you can see them from time to time, but you can also walk right through them so they are not really there , andybody an idea if this bug is allready known? they are all over the map and look like parts of POI's. They are randomly appearing. Saw them in the city's the majority of the time.

[Callum123456789]

It's really odd seeing all these posts about the smg I know that it is a rare drop but by day 35 I think I had like 4? 2 from lot and 2 from tier 5 questing 

[Kosmic Kerman]

4 minutes ago, Teckno said:

 

 

Has anybody an Idea what this is ? There are these "ghost blocks" you can see them from time to time, but you can also walk right through them so they are not really there , andybody an idea if this bug is allready known? they are all over the map and look like parts of POI's. They are randomly appearing. Saw them in the city's the majority of the time.

 

I haven't seen those. Maybe you or the server still have some remnants from A19 or mod packs in your install.

12 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

BTW, I noticed that vehicles can hit an invisible wall (usually at top speed,  but happened with bicycle in a 10k map a few times too) and result in stuff like jumping several meters into the air, bouncing off the invisible wall, backflipping, etc. The physics of the invisible wall issue can vary between vehicles and where you hit it at the time.

This issue has existed for a couple of Alphas now and the Devs haven't been able to track it down.  I think the bigger issue is that vehicles are teleporting once you get off them and sometimes get buried in the ground in their new location. I have that happen a couple of times to my bicycle. This has never happened to me in previous Alphas (I play solo only).

[Blake_]

14 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

 

This issue has existed for a couple of Alphas now and the Devs haven't been able to track it down.  I think the bigger issue is that vehicles are teleporting once you get off them and sometimes get buried in the ground in their new location. I have that happen a couple of times to my bicycle. This has never happened to me in previous Alphas (I play solo only).

Yeah, somehow it became quite frequent when chunk loading is getting stressed (edit: slow ram and/or not enough ram) , like in 10k maps. It used to happen just in Multiplayer. Now it's even common in Single player.

[faatal]

25 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

BTW, I noticed that vehicles can hit an invisible wall (usually at top speed,  but happened with bicycle in a 10k map a few times too) and result in stuff like jumping several meters into the air, bouncing off the invisible wall, backflipping, etc. The physics of the invisible wall issue can vary between vehicles and where you hit it at the time.

Could be chunks not loading/generating fast enough. Could be the Unity decides to make a semi functional collider issue, which requires a regen of collider and we don't know until the vehicle is trying to drive over it.

 

SP or MP?

[Callum123456789]

4 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

Yeah, somehow it became quite frequent when chunk loading is getting stressed (edit: slow ram and/or not enough ram) , like in 10k maps. It used to happen just in Multiplayer. Now it's even common in Single player.

I get the same issue from time to time if I quit off on my vehicle aswell it telrports to where I last got on it its really strange  it never used to happen it started happening in a18 I'm sure to some extent but became more common I'm a19 in sp too

[faatal]

23 minutes ago, Teckno said:

 

Has anybody an Idea what this is ? There are these "ghost blocks" you can see them from time to time, but you can also walk right through them so they are not really there , andybody an idea if this bug is allready known? they are all over the map and look like parts of POI's. They are randomly appearing. Saw them in the city's the majority of the time.

Not heard of that from the test team. Could be an old data issue. Is this a new A20 game using an A20 world without mods?

Wiping all old save data is advisable from one major alpha to the next (18 to 19 to 20).

[Lord Morphleyes]

2 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

I get the same issue from time to time if I quit off on my vehicle aswell it telrports to where I last got on it its really strange 

I read somewhere that this can be caused by disembarking (E) while still holding (W)  

It happened to my wife once, now we always wait until our vehicle has come to a complete stop.  It hasn't happened again.  But then again. It only happened once in 3x500 hours so...

[faatal]

21 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

This issue has existed for a couple of Alphas now and the Devs haven't been able to track it down.  I think the bigger issue is that vehicles are teleporting once you get off them and sometimes get buried in the ground in their new location. I have that happen a couple of times to my bicycle. This has never happened to me in previous Alphas (I play solo only).

Different issue. Collision mesh baking thread is new. AFAIK teleporting is fixed. What appears to be happening now is vehicles being thrown by physics due to some delayed or broken mesh colliders. I already tried to fix it and abuse it, but you think it is fixed and a tester turns around and says it happened, but then I can't repro.

[Teckno]

Was an A20 Experimental Build, No Mods, Some people on my server delete the Save Data, and some didnt, at the end it didnt make a difference, all player saw these ghost blocks.

[faatal]

1 minute ago, Teckno said:

Was an A20 Experimental Build, No Mods, Some people on my server delete the Save Data, and some didnt, at the end it didnt make a difference, all player saw these ghost blocks.

Which is probably a server data issue. Deleting data locally won't fix it if the server turns around and sends you junk data again. All A19 worlds should to be deleted off the server because it is possible an A20 game could be started using an A19 world.

[Khalagar]

9 minutes ago, faatal said:

Not heard of that from the test team. Could be an old data issue. Is this a new A20 game using an A20 world without mods?

 

I've had the issue in A20 when I was living in a pre-existing PoI. When you first load in there are phantom blocks everywhere until you try to upgrade one / make contact with the real ones.

 

In my case it was a Garage that had the door open (via the switch that opens it at the end of a clear quest but doesn't let you close it back) so when I spawned in there would be a phantom wall where the door was supposed to be at

[Doomofman]

20 minutes ago, faatal said:

Different issue. Collision mesh baking thread is new. AFAIK teleporting is fixed. What appears to be happening now is vehicles being thrown by physics due to some delayed or broken mesh colliders. I already tried to fix it and abuse it, but you think it is fixed and a tester turns around and says it happened, but then I can't repro.

It's an annoying little bug. Have your vehicle parked up nicely so you can drop some loot into it on a T4/T5 run and you come back outside to find it 100m away

[canadianbluebeer]

The invisible forcefield has been around for a while.

 

Totally random. Happens in SP and MP.

 

I consider it the world saying "SLOW DOWN DAGNABBIT!".  

 

You bounce against it for a couple seconds, so let off the gas, wait a couple seconds, then go.

 

Game has to be doing something in the background, but what? Dunno.

(I consider it a feature anyway, not a bug)

 

"Shield UP Keptain!"

"I didn't ask for them to be up"

"oh. Well, they're up anyway"

😛

 

[MuffinMan]

24 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

I've had the issue in A20 when I was living in a pre-existing PoI. When you first load in there are phantom blocks everywhere until you try to upgrade one / make contact with the real ones.

 

In my case it was a Garage that had the door open (via the switch that opens it at the end of a clear quest but doesn't let you close it back) so when I spawned in there would be a phantom wall where the door was supposed to be at

Yep I've seen this issue once or twice in A20 too. A door I had put into a POI was open but had 2 "ghost blocks" inside the door frame upon loading. Once the door was shut they went away. I've seen the issue with "ghost terrain" in many alphas and saw it once or twice in A20 as well, but it seems more rare now. That is where you have edited the terrain manually and upon loading in it is the old terrain visually but it doesn't actually exist (ie you  can fall in holes prior created). Damaging the terrain seems to cause an update and fixes it.

 

Also another bug in latest build (238), on a quest a POI was changed upon clicking the (!) to another POI and it got some enemies stuck under the ground. The new POI was like a house with a pool, and a SPA in one of the rooms, pretty cool POI it changed to. Can't remember what it was before but it was different for sure, usually you click the (!) and it regens the existing POI, this is the first time I've seen it put a completely new one instead.

[Matt115]

Idk if this is bug or not so : i spawn 10-15 m near trader and first car i found had iron pickaxe - well it is 7:31 of first game so very fast progresion XD

[Blake_]

55 minutes ago, faatal said:

Could be chunks not loading/generating fast enough. Could be the Unity decides to make a semi functional collider issue, which requires a regen of collider and we don't know until the vehicle is trying to drive over it.

 

SP or MP?

All of my cases were Single player with a bicycle (because bicycle is good for your health,lol) . It didn't happen in single player back in a19 (it happened to my partners as p2p clients a couple of times in a19), but then again chunks weren't so crowded in the previous alpha.

 

Edit: bicycle is bad news, as it is the slowest vehicle, so that's why I mentioned it. I actually bought a motorcycle after 40 hours in and it happened once with it too over the course of a couple of days.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

Could be chunks not loading/generating fast enough. Could be the Unity decides to make a semi functional collider issue, which requires a regen of collider and we don't know until the vehicle is trying to drive over it.

 

SP or MP?

For me it's happened in SP on both 10k and 8k maps in A20. Happened in A19 as well.

1 hour ago, faatal said:

Different issue. Collision mesh baking thread is new. AFAIK teleporting is fixed. What appears to be happening now is vehicles being thrown by physics due to some delayed or broken mesh colliders. I already tried to fix it and abuse it, but you think it is fixed and a tester turns around and says it happened, but then I can't repro.

It happened to me yesterday but I'm not 100% on which build it occured on. I will comment if it happens again. The last time it happened it moved about 200 blocks or so and was buried under the top layer.  I'm assuming there was a minor height difference between where I left the bike and where it ended up.

[Blake_]

@faatal, would it be possible to allow players in the video options to preload as many chunks as they want and unload just the changed blocks from memory? 

 

And about that, I noticed that destroyed player-built structures can still show in the world and neither restarting the game nor restarting steam nor windows fixes the issue, so it actually stays written in the disk virtually forever.

[Callum123456789]

 

this zombie is just staring at me here kinda odd but i guess she doesnt wanna fight 

[Blake_]

47 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

 

this zombie is just staring at me here kinda odd but i guess she doesnt wanna fight 

That's a feature. Zombie marriage.

[beHypE]

12 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

(...) A good mainstream game should have every mechanic be easily accessible and easy to understand at the snap of a finger. It's a major problem, if you follow the subreddit - new players being puzzled with the mechanics of the forge (or "smelter") happens a lot more than you'd might think.

 

Regardless of what we want, the best possible system imho is for the forge, campfire, chem station, and cement mixer to be deleted and for the workbench to be the end-all-be-all, and for it to be simplified as well - no schematic, and only crafted with wood, glue, and short iron pipes. Additional pointers and hover over text would be beneficial as well.

 

Or at the very least, forgetting all that is above, a tutorial map that the game defaults to when creating a world.

 

I couldn't disagree more. I think it's also reasonable to assume that you can't please every new player but that this is ultimately a game to discover and experiment with. Many very popular games have this same niche where the whole purpose of the game is the adventure of "figuring things out", not getting them done. This one is no different. Unlocking crafting stations is a staple of the crafting genre and you'd just erase all that and have one easy-to-craft workbench that does it all ? Why even bother at that point, make it an inventory only game while you're at it.

 

Just like many old timers I may have some difficulty accepting change sometimes, because the human learns to like what he's used to. But I can understand why certain mechanics and systems have to evolve, change, get revamped because they're obsolete in their current form based on all the surrounding mechanisms having changed. If we can come up with something more logical but also something more rich gameplay wise, I'm all for it. But if the point is simply to dumb down and simplify for the heck of it, you might aswell just focus forces on something else. The issue has blown out of proportion on the forums, I don't think there's any major issue with the forge as it is, even though it could be better - but it always can.